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WILL FLORIDA LEARN?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published July 2, 2021
Everybody is talking about the tragedy of the Champlain Towers
South Condominium in Surfside. Everybody wants to blame
everybody – and attorneys are busy filing lawsuits, smelling a
hell of a lot of money going into their bank accounts.
The tragedy happened – and nobody can make it undone. But
shouldn’t we learn from the mistakes that were made that ended
in the collapse of this hi-rise building?
Let’s face it: Many boards rather spend money on beautification
projects instead of taking care of structural maintenance. It
sure looks better, makes them feel good and gets them more votes
at the next board election. As we could read in the media, a
pool contractor visited the building two days before it
collapsed because the board planned on redoing the pool. I get
e-mails and calls all the time from concerned owners complaining
about structural problems in their buildings – ignored by the
board.
The most important lesson: ENFORCEMENT!
Florida’s condominium owners face
a total lack of enforcement, starting with record requests.
Florida statutes [FS
718.501(1)(d)7] clearly requires the Division of
Condominiums, Timeshares & Mobile Homes to subpoena the
documents requested by the owner, if the owner can show that
he/she followed all the procedures required by law. What
happens? Nothing! Owners who file complaints are receiving
useless form letters, explaining that there is nothing the
Division can do. That makes it often possible for owners to take
a look at the actual contracts the association signed with
contractors, in order to see what repairs and maintenance has
been contracted. Engineering reports are often hidden from the
owners – and record requests are ignored. There are lots of
older hi-rise condo building in the Tri-County area, buildings
which definitely are in need of serious structural repairs and
maintenance.
Why aren’t the building inspectors of the cities doing their job
and are forcing the boards to make sure that the buildings are
safe? They are getting paid (and are hopefully properly trained)
for doing such a job, while most boards are run by “amateurs”,
who are supposed to make decision that are far out of their
league of expertise.
As we have seen in Surfside, wrong decisions can cost many
lives. Shouldn’t we all work together to create safe-guards in
order to avoid such tragedies in the future?
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Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice,
Florida
's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group.
CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in
community
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associations. He moved to
Florida
in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the
developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues
for his own purposes. End of retirement!
CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in
Tallahassee
- finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a
member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.
The organization has two websites to inform interested
Florida
homeowners and condo owners:
News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.
Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all
service providers surely have a different interest! We are
trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are
useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking
in
Florida
!
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